Rob and I have bought a small plot in Mid Wales near where we live and the plan is to build a 4-bed energy efficient house. It is going to drive us insane! In the meantime, as a university researcher and trainee archivist I'm going to explore some of the records out there on and effecting self-builds. Wish us luck…

Friday, 7 October 2011

Still a field...

Its been a week but no change! The planner has been ill since last Friday and is in today catching up – so we should get a response to our plans on Monday. The waiting doesn’t get any easier but we have been distracted with endless amounts of packing, moving and unpacking, which will continue this weekend. I’ve only moved 10 mins up the road but feel like I’ve regained some muscles in my arms!

Still a field:

The cats and dogs are now officially under the same roof in practice for the new house – which we are having trouble believing in. Putting Rob’s stuff in storage last night we tried to visualise taking it out, at some point in the future, to a real house rather than a little field but I don’t think either of us managed it!

Royal Commission archives

I’m looking into places to find building and architecture archives and will have to visit the National Monuments Record of Wales at the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales in Aberystwyth RCAHMW

The webpage claims: “It includes over 1.25 million photographs and many thousands of drawings, surveys, reports and maps. The archive grows daily as information is gathered directly through the Royal Commission’s research and survey programmes and from donations of material from other organisations and private individuals.”

Unlike the amalgamated English Heritage, Wales (and Scotland) have kept the Royal Commission which is “the national collection of information about the historic environment of Wales from the earliest cave dwellings to 21st-century windfarms” as opposed to CADW (which means ‘keep’ in Welsh) which “is the Welsh Government’s historic environment service working for an accessible and well-protected historic environment for Wales” CADW

It isn’t the most sophisticated of websites so I’m a bit apprehensive. As with a lot of online access to archives, it can be very difficult to get a sense of the whole collection and disorientating to have to search and then know you are looking at records (images/reports etc) in the middle of a collection you can’t grasp. But COFLEIN, the online database can be searched via keyword/advanced search or map sections and having done a quick check it was pretty cool to find images of our plot on photos of our lane and the adjacent farm, and a history of lead mining – hmmm, less cool??

The images are under copyright so not much use here but a taster I think. Going and talking to a real person about what I can find there (what sort of surveys do they do? What dort of donations do they accept?) should be fruitful…